c-treeRTG provides safe and successful COBOL migration

c-treeRTG opens door to easy transition to wide range of languages

COBOL has been reliable in running mission-critical applications for more than 60 years. Due to changes in the technology landscape and a dwindling workforce, organizations that use non-mainframe COBOL systems are experiencing a new wave of challenges similar to what happened during the ’90s with the Y2K pressure: How to modernize these systems with minimum risk, and preserving decades of investment?

And migration overall is a frightening project to start with: It requires rewriting code that is stable for decades, probably moving to a new platform that will require new skills, training, a complete new stack of software infrastructure, rapidly becoming a massive project that consumes an enormous amount of money and resources. Additionally, it almost forces customers to contemplate a “Big Bang” approach (all-at-once), which can be even scarier due to its latent power to be completely disruptive, such as if it doesn’t work or nothing no longer works.

FairCom’s c-treeRTG COBOL Edition is a proven migration tool ideal for companies that have decided to replace their legacy system, but understand that a slow, steady approach is a much better one. c-treeRTG provides a path that lessens the dangers of the big-bang migration approach, results in lower TCO and enables less resource consumption.

The secret of c-treeRTG’s success: Focus on the data

While most migration (and modernization) efforts focus on the language, labeling COBOL as old or antiquated, FairCom puts the emphasis on the data, which is a breakthrough in the modernization options available out there in the market. With the FairCom approach, the data files are converted to a c-treeRTG format, which is 100 percent compatible with the native COBOL I/O methods. Because c-treeRTG’s core engine is a NoSQL / SQL database, this keeps COBOL applications fully functional while a company develops new applications in one of the many other languages supported by c-treeRTG interfaces: Python, PHP, Java, .NET, C# and more.

Since there is no need to disrupt the existing environment, c-treeRTG allows an organization to slowly deprecate its COBOL applications with a lengthy and safe migration strategy. Users also receive flexibility in regards to the “how to” and “where to” of the migration:

• Migration to a full utilization of c-treeRTG as the new data management system
• Migration to a non-c-treeRTG data management system database
• Migration can take place in one big move (big-bang migration)
• Migration can occur in small steps over time

c-treeRTG opens the door to increased performance

Among the companies that have trusted c-treeRTG for its legacy system modernization is InfoTrax. The company has a product, DataTrax, that provides sales systems for its clients. One example of the many areas in which DataTrax experienced increased performance via COBOL migration with c-treeRTG is its ability to write out at least 60 million records every two hours when providing the needed audit detail for just one client.

But the most telling impact that c-treeRTG has had for InfoTrax and DataTrax is summed up by the company CEO: “When we started the c-treeRTG migration our largest client did about $200 Million a year in business. Today our largest client does about a billion dollars in business. That simply would not have been possible under the old file system.”

You can learn more about migration and/or modernization with c-treeRTG at faircom.com/products/c-treertg, or you can schedule a demo with a FairCom team member here.